Some years ago, while watching the CBS Evening News, I was
startled to hear Dan Rather say, "And that's part of our world tonight."
Mr. Rather then thanked me for watching, but it was I who wanted to thank
him-- for frank acknowledgment of what he and his colleagues actually do.
They give us part of the world, a version of it; and there is no scandal
in saying that this artifact, the news, is something journalists make,
which means it can be made poorly or well.

The point may seem simple, or even simple-minded; and yet it is a
good starting point for any discussion of journalism and our public
culture. For it allows us to name well what journalists do well: present
a version of events that bears the mark of mind and the stamp of belief.
"And that's part of our world tonight" is a very civil thing for an
anchorman to say. It admits: "This is not the final word, or the whole
truth, or a mirror we've made, just the best we could do in crafting our
nightly report."

Freed from some of its grander pretensions, ("Expect the world,"
says the New York Times in its current ad campaign, "And that's the
way it is," spoke Walter Cronkite from the chair Rather now holds) the
news is made simultaneously more human, more artful, more reliable-- in
fact, more real. For it is easier to trust in a journalist's version of
events than a journalist who says: I deal not in versions. My trade is
the truth.

On the other hand, to say the news is made is not to say the news
media make it up. "The Legend on the License," in John Hersey's memorable
phrase, declares: "what we tell you is true, not an invented or
consciously distorted account, not colored by prejudice or freighted with
a wish." But if we want the truth from journalists, as best they can
discern it, we should also reckon with the truth in what Dan Rather was
saying. And with what Walter Lippmann meant in 1922, when he likened the
news to "a beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one
episode and then another, out of darkness into vision."

By picturing the people who shine the beacon here and there--
using their judgment, including their judgments about us--we adopt a more
humble but more compelling image of the journalist than "that's the way it
is..." ever was. And with this image there is much we can do. Once we
realize that the news is made, rather than found, we can ask what it looks
and feels like when it is made well. And we can ask what "well" means,
from a variety of perspectives. An investor with business interests in
Asia might ask for news made one way, a machinist scanning a union
newspaper wants it another.

But what about those whose investment is in democracy itself?
That means us, the political community at-large, ritually invoked in that
newsroom battlecry, "the public's right to know." How do we and our
fellow citizens know when the journalism we are getting is the one we need
to navigate the public world and take our proper place within it? Here is
a matter too important to be left to journalists alone, in the same way
that health is too vital to be delegated to doctors.

In the century now closing, American journalism has taken on more
and more of the trappings of a profession: we train journalists in some of
our best universities; we expect from them, as they expect from
themselves, certain standards of conduct; and we give them wide latitude
in deciding what right conduct shall mean. The journalist's standards
rest in turn on certain ideas about democracy, politics, public discourse,
constitutional government and the common interest. Those ideas are
subject to debate, even as we recognize that an independent press, free of
undue pressure, is in everyone's interest.

I teach in a journalism department at a research university in the
media capital of the world. We do not require of our students, nor do we
offer ourselves, any courses in "democracy for news professionals." We do
not ask them to inquire deeply into the requirements of a healthy public
culture, a workable sphere of discussion, a politics we can respect, a
government that comes as near as possible to the ideals of the American
republic.

We, and the schools to which we compare ourselves, do not insist
on teaching these things because we have something to teach in their
place: how to be a competent professional. Press ethics and a knowledge
of media law are thus the spots in the curriculum where the political
community edges into view. But once we think of journalism a curriculum
in itself, a sort of daily tutorial in the events of our time, then all
the teachings of that curriculum fall open to examination. From this
angle, the relevant questions are not whether journalists are competent,
ethical and professional; but whether the craft as a whole is serving the
public interest, which means the stake we all have in making democracy
work.

In the words of historian Christopher Lasch, democracy is best
defended "not as the most efficient but as the most educational form of
government." All the institutions that help make democracy work are
educational, in Lasch's sense; and this includes the press. Typically,
when we debate press performance, we fix on a handful of familiar
problems: inaccuracy, bias, or a rush to judgment; a fixation on scandal
and sleaze; stories that are bungled amid others that are missed; and
"news" that signals little more than a commercial formula at work. But a
more vital debate would reach deeper: to the lessons we receive from
journalists as they educate us to a sense of the world while reporting on
the here and now, the far and near.

What kind of instruction should we expect, along with our daily
diet of information? When the searchlights are thrown up, the klieg
lights come on, what ought to be well illuminated in their path? In
presenting what can only be a part of our world, what parts should
journalists take care to include and highlight? And beyond sound
reporting, a profession in whose standards we can trust, what can we ask
of a press that is both a private business and a public actor?

2. The press as an actor

I use the word "actor" with some hesitation-- and to make a point.
The hesitation is that American journalists are reluctant to describe
themselves as anything more than observers or commentators. And for good
reason. There is, finally, a difference between doing journalism and
doing politics; between conveying the scene to others and striding across
it as one of the players. The press box, set apart from the public stage,
is not an imaginary locale. By reserving a place for journalists in their
capacity as chroniclers, we expect them to tell us about the world, not
rearrange it to their liking. So there is sound sense, and a good deal of
common sense, in the traditions of objectivity, independence and
detachment, which are very much American inventions-- among our
contributions to the journalism done around the globe.

But if there is honor in these traditions, as I believe there is,
there is no dishonor in calling them part of our political tradition, one
way in which we realize our aspiration to live together, as free-thinking
citizens who try to solve their problems through democratic means. And
this is my point in describing journalists as actors, of a kind. What
they do cannot be easily separated from what gets done in politics, even
though the two arts are distinct. To borrow a thought from Jean Bethke
Elshtain, (who was writing about the schools) to call journalism
"political" work is not to say it should be freely politicized. Rather,
we gain a wider view of what that work is about when we describe it as
political, in the broadest meaning of the word.

As any savvy operator (or attentive citizen) knows, the version of
the public world we get from journalists doubles back to become, as Rather
said, a part of that world. When, for example, news crews show up in a
Senate hearing room, the room becomes a different kind of space, inviting
a different kind of politics; and no one wise in the ways of power can
ignore this fact. In a broader and deeper way, the news is always getting
mixed up with our public and popular cultures, returning "us" to us with
all our excesses and discontents, but also setting out a pattern,
amplifying a tone, inviting a pattern of behavior-- all part of
journalism's hectic and varied curriculum.

This tenor of thought--which understands journalism as an
education in democracy and politics, a civic lesson of sorts, as well as a
maker and molder of our public climate--is not entirely foreign to the
American press, although I would call it a minor chord. It can be heard
clearly in these passages, all three from mainstream journalists with
considerable experience:

"For quite some time now, the public square has been has been more like a
vicious circle. The fakery of the candidates (whether through attacks ads
or through empty promises, on the order of "Read my lips: no new taxes")
begets the cynicism of the reporters and voters, and the cynicism of the
reporters and voters begets fakery and attack politics, because those
tactics work best when the public is poised to believe the worst about the
candidates." -- Paul Taylor, former reporter for the Washington Post, in
a 1992 essay.

"Modern American culture is loud and adversarial, and politics reflects
the culture. And the ever-adversarial, conflict-seeking press helps shape
the politics." -- Katharine Seeyle, reporter for the New York Times, in a
1995 article.

"We have to remember, as journalists, that we may be observers but we are
not totally disinterested observers. We are not social engineers, but
each one of us has a stake in the health of this democracy. Democracy and
the social contract that makes it work are held together by a delicate web
of trust, and all of us in journalism hold edges of the web. We are not
just amused bystanders, watching the idiots screw it up."-- Robert
MacNeil, former anchor of the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour on PBS, in a 1995
speech.

I have a file in which I deposit such statements because they
elaborate on Dan Rather's tempting remark. That is, they go beyond the
acknowledgment that news is not a mirror of events to a further truth:
that the press is an active agent in public life, not a passive observer.

As Paul Taylor wrote, the behavior of journalists "begets" the
behavior of others in the public square, even though the reverse is also
true. As Katharine Seeyle puts it, journalists who seek out conflict and
adopt an adversarial stance gradually "shape" politics into this pattern,
even as they are shaped by it. And as Robert MacNeil observes, one of the
things journalists make (or undo) is "the web of trust" on which democracy
hangs. Though they are not social engineers, or the only ones involved,
neither are they "amused bystanders," watching the fools commit their
follies.

3. Journalism and leadership.

All of which raises the tricky but not impossible question of
"leadership" in journalism, for anyone who acts on our common life can try
to point the way to a better life, or, in the case of journalism, find a
way of telling our story that helps us own and improve it.

Most journalists would probably admit that leadership is something
we can occasionally expect of their profession. If asked what this means,
they might reply as follows: the press can employ its editorial voice to
awaken public conscience, warn of possible dangers and recommend a course
of action. That is, it can be an opinion leader, as long it labels what
it is doing "opinion." Beyond that, it can take the lead in exposing
corruption, documenting the abuse of public trust, bringing hidden or
suppressed facts to light. Investigative reporting is leadership because
it can lead (indirectly) to reforms. Finally, by focusing on matters that
might otherwise escape notice, the press can lead by example. It can say
to the community: "we're giving time and space to this story because we
believe it's important, whether or not others agree." Here, leadership
means bringing people around to the belief that what journalists are
reporting deserves sustained attention.

These three acts would, I believe, exhaust the common meaning of
leadership in American journalism. But they do not exhaust the
possibilities. Consider: If journalists like Taylor see how they keep a
"vicious circle" going, can't they learn to sustain other, more virtuous
cycles? If reporters like Seeyle understand that the "press helps shape
the politics" we have, can't they begin shaping the politics we need? If
an accomplished broadcaster like Robert MacNeil knows that social trust is
a "delicate web" that journalists, among others, uphold, can't he and his
colleagues also try to strengthen that web? And wouldn't these be
responsible acts of leadership for an institution that claims a duty to
the public good?

My answer would be "yes," but it is not my answer alone. Here is
a provocative passage from a column by David Broder of the Washington
Post, arguably the most respected political journalist of our time:

We cannot allow the [1990] elections to be another exercise in public
disillusionment and political cynicism... It is time for those of us in
the world's freest press to become activists, not on behalf of a
particular party or politician, but on behalf of the process of
self-government.

Broder explained what he meant by "activists" in a 1991 lecture
that followed up on his column. There he described a "bleak political
landscape" where citizens "tell us that they are disgusted by the
campaigns they are offered in this country." Public confidence in
politics and politicians was reaching dangerous lows, he said.
Journalists were not the cause of this development; and it was important
not to overstate their role. But the widespread "disillusionment about
the heart of politics--the election process--is something in which we play
a part," Broder noted.

Along with the political consultants, whose power was rising in
the campaign system, journalists had become a "permanent part of the
political establishment." Both groups characteristically denied "any
responsibility for the consequences of elections." This was disingenuous
at best, dishonest at worst, for the fact was "we have colluded with the
campaign consultants to produce the kind of politics which is turning off
the American people." What can I do? Broder asked himself:

My answer is tentative and expressed without any great confidence.
But if we are going to change the pattern, we in the press have to try
deliberately to reposition ourselves in the process. We have to try to
distance ourselves from the people we write about--the politicians and
their political consultants--and move ourselves closer to the people that
we write for-- the voters and potential voters.

The time had arrived to rethink a fundamental assumption of
political journalism: "that the campaign and its contents are the property
of the candidate." Broder sought "an alternative proposition," another
way of defining the story. Journalists should treat the campaign period
as part of a longer drama, ("embracing both elections and government")
centered on the American people rather than the candidates and their
advisors. The campaign should be treated as the property of the voters, a
time when they "have a right to have their concerns addressed and their
questions answered by the people who are seeking to exercise power."

"Let their agenda drive our agenda," as Broder put it.
Journalists should represent the public to the political process, rather
than just bring the process home to a public already disaffected with it.
Why do all this? Because the situation was not beyond remedy. Broder
held to a belief that the American people were not "apathetic or
unconcerned;" nor were they "selfish or indifferent." They were simply
tired of seeing politics treated as a "sport for a relative handful of
political insiders." He closed on a personal note. "I would like to
leave some better legacy than that behind when I get out of this
business."

What is this speech, if not an act of leadership? Broder, a
prominent figure in his field, diagnoses a problem, implicates himself and
his colleagues in it, and tries to imagine a way out. He lays forth an
"alternative proposition" that is both practical and, if this is not too
strong a term, visionary. It is visionary because it refuses to accept
what is as the horizon of what could be-- in politics, in public
discourse, and in journalism. In Broder's treatment, things appear in
what philosopher Sheldon Wolin once called their "corrected fullness,"
which, for Wolin, is what political vision is all about. The hope that
election campaigns might become the "property" of citizens, a time when
their concerns are fairly addressed, is a prescription for a better
politics and a better press.

Broder thought that this enlarged vision, if embraced by his
colleagues, might bring changes to political reporting, which might also
affect politics. After all, he said, journalists had already "colluded"
with political professionals to produce a dreary dialogue dominated by the
maneuverings of insiders. Perhaps the press could move away from one kind
of cooperation toward another: finding and amplifying citizens' concerns
during election season, asking for a response from candidates, then
persisting in this aim as balloting gives way to governing.

Three things impress me about Broder's act of rhetorical
leadership: The first is that he understands journalists as actors who
have helped to create the scene they also survey. The second is that
Broder knows he must re-imagine politics in order to improve the
journalism done about it. The third is his lengthened time horizon: a
concern for the "legacy" he and his colleagues were leaving to future
generations. None of these moves is common in what we might call the mind
of the American press. All have wide implications. And as it turned out,
Broder's leadership had some tangible effects, most notably in the
experiment that has come to be known as civic or public journalism.

4. Birth of a notion: the public journalism movement

By 1990, some in journalism were already moving ahead without
waiting for the nod from Broder. Out in the plains of Kansas, Davis
Merritt, editor of the Wichita Eagle, had begun refashioning his
newspaper's approach to political coverage. Merritt was a 35-year veteran
of the newspaper world who had spent time in Washington during the
Watergate era.

Like many of his colleagues, he was d Did not talk about it," is a
fact generated by a particular way of imagining political time: as the
weekly process by which the choices facing the state are (or are not)
discussed by the candidates.

"Where They Stand" was thus more than a handy voters guide.
Fundamentally, it was an argument for what politics is supposed to be
about: public concerns and public debate. It was a powerful use of
political space, especially the threat of a blank appearing under a
candidate's name. Deploying this threat was the Eagle's way of
being "tough" on the candidates. Here, however, toughness doesn't becomes
an end in itself, as so often happens in political reporting. A candidate
can avoid the penalty of white space by cooperating in a process that will
help voters make up their minds. The rules are clear: say something
meaningful about the key issues; we'll report it and keep reporting it.

Merritt's 1990 experiment recognized that beyond "information,"
the press sends us an to experience public life in one
manner or another. Reflecting on what this invitation should say was
perhaps the most daring thing the Eagle did. The experience should
be participatory, Merritt and his staff said. It should cultivate a
useful dialogue about issues. It should address people in their capacity
as citizens, in the hope of strengthening that capacity. It should try to
make public life go well, in the sense of making good on democracy's
promise.

These "shoulds" were acts of leadership by a local newspaper. And
they would eventually form the core of public journalism as a philosophy.
As Merritt wrote about the 1990 voter project:

Something intriguing and promising had happened. We had
deliberately broken out of the passive and increasingly detrimental
conventions of election coverage. We had, in effect, left the press box
and gotten down on the field, not as a contestant but as a fair-minded
participant with an open and expressed interest in the process going well.
. . It was also a liberating moment, for me and the journalists at the
Eagle. We no longer had to be the victims, along with the public,
of a politics gone sour. We had a new purposefulness: revitalizing a
moribund public process.

In the fall of 1992, this "new purposefulness" was taken further
by the Charlotte Observer with its own experiment in election
coverage. Like others in journalism, executive editor Rich Oppel was
dissatisfied with press performance in past campaigns, particularly with
horse-race polling, which had miscalled a bitter 1990 Senate race between
Jessie Helms and Harvey Gantt. In 1992, Oppel and publisher Rolfe Neill
were determined to try something different.

The Observer set out to amplify and extend the "new
political contract" outlined two years earlier by Merritt, and described
in strikingly similar language by Broder. In a front-page column
entitled, "We'll help you regain control of the issues," Oppel announced
the paper's intentions:

David Broder of the Washington Post has said voters see no
"connection between their concerns in their daily lives and what they hear
talked about and see reported by the press in most political
campaigns."
We think this is dangerous...
We will seek to reduce the coverage of campaign strategy and
candidates' manipulations, and increase the focus on voters' concerns. We
will seek to distinguish between issues that merely influence an
election's outcome, and those of governance that will be relevant after
the election. We will link our coverage to the voters' agenda, and
initiate more questions on behalf of the voters.

Oppel's column represents a kind of coming clean that was long
overdue in campaign journalism. First, he admits that
politics-as-strategy is a narrative device that was bringing diminishing
returns; then he declares that his newspaper will be consciously applying
a new device: a "focus on voters' concerns." He acknowledges that the
temporal frame--the definition of political time--that ordinarily shapes
campaign coverage is too narrow, focusing as it does on "issues that
merely influence an election's outcome." He then announces the choice of
a new frame: matters of "governance that will be relevant after the
election." He admits that question-asking is an important public function
that can be performed in several different ways. The way the Observer
chooses is to "initiate more questions on behalf of the voters."

In the same passage, Oppel concedes that "covering politics" and
"having an agenda" are not mutually exclusive; then he vows, "We will link
our coverage to the voters agenda," just as Broder suggested. Finally,
Oppel declares that a newspaper naturally has convictions about politics
("We think this is dangerous") and that news coverage follows from
those convictions ("We'll help you regain control of the issues.")
This is a far cry from traditional thinking in journalism, which pretends
that convictions are properly contained within the editorial page, while
the news. David Broder was one. He grasped that if journalists are to be
seen as actors, it is reasonable to expect from them a kind of agenda, or
at least a desired outcome of their actions.

But what should the agenda of the press be? How can they justify
it to wider audiences? What sort of rhetoric should they employ in doing
so? Such questions confound the profession's view of itself. Almost all
the key tenets in the journalist's ethical code emphasize, not civic
action, but professional detachment: the maligned but still influential
doctrine of "objectivity," the related emphasis on "fairness" and
"balance," the separation between the news columns and the editorial page,
the "watchdog" role, the "adversarial" stance, the principle of ignoring
consequences in deciding what's newsworthy ("let the chips fall where they
may.") None of these ideas offers guidance to the people Broder tried to
address: professionals willing to acknowledge their influence in politics
and to use it on behalf of "genuine democracy in this country."

Nor was it journalists alone who declined this challenge. The
entire political culture, preoccupied with media "bias," made it perilous
to even ask about agendas and outcomes. Far safer for journalists to
cling to the observer's position, even if failed to describe way things
worked. But there were the mounting costs to these attitudes. How long
before public confidence in the press evaporated? How long before
politics transmuted into something so little resembling democratic choice
that nothing journalists did would matter much? How long before the
entire enterprise of political reporting would come to feel almost
pointless, an exercise in futility, a song for the cynical? Broder felt
the clock was ticking: as politics went, so went the press.

Meanwhile, a similar tangle of problems confronted journalists at
the local level. Readers were disappearing; in many cities, the sense of
community was unraveling along with broader changes in American life.
Journalists found they could do excellent, even prize-winning work and it
would have little effect, either because fewer people were paying
attention or because too many had given up on politics and journalism.
Here, editors like Buzz Merritt and Rich Oppel had gone Broder one better.
They were experimenting with dramatic changes in practice.

If these early gropings were to continue, a lot of work lay ahead.
Some of the work was intellectual: finding a coherent philosophy for a
press that might elect a different path. Some of it was practical:
experimenting with a revised approach that fit the constraints of daily
journalism. Some of it involved mobilizing like-minded people to form
something resembling a "movement." And some of it was institutional:
finding money and organizational support to further a rising spirit of
reform.

5. Public journalism: Getting a fix on the phenomenon

Much of this was accomplished in the years 1993 to 1997, when "public
journalism" (also known as "civic journalism") came to the attention of
the American press. The profession had some trouble coping with this
development because public journalism was not a single phenomenon, but a
broad pattern of activity that moved in many directions and relied on
multiple sources of support. Among the key players were:

Editors and executives and newspapers and broadcasts outlets, along with
reporters and producers who worked under them;

Foundations (chiefly, the Kettering Foundation, the Knight Foundation and
the Pew Charitable Trusts) that provided funding for research, conferences
and experiments in the field;

Think tanks like the American Press Institute and the Poynter Institute
for Media Studies, where important get-togethers were held;

Companies, (Knight-Ridder was the most prominent but not the only one)
that exposed the journalists in their employ to the ideas behind public
journalism and urged them to take it seriously;

Professors (like me) at journalism schools, who undertook research and
advanced the thinking behind public journalism, often in interaction with
working professionals.

To further complicate the picture, the range of experiments that
fell under the heading of "public journalism" went considerably beyond the
election-year projects I have detailed here. For example:

Newspapers like the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, West Virginia,
which helped convene a group of citizens (900 showed up for the first
meeting) to discuss what might be done about a faltering economy and the
flight of young people from the area. The citizens organized themselves
into task forces that examined what needed to be done in different areas--
such as economic development, job training and education. The newspaper
pledged helped out by reporting on how similar-sized communities had coped
with massive job loss and by opening its pages to ideas and opinions
generated by the ensuing civic discussion.

Media partnerships like one in Madison, Wisconsin, which brought
newspapers, TV stations and public radio outlets together to sponsor
televised public forums where citizens could deliberate, grand-jury style,
on important policy questions, with background materials printed in the
newspaper. The forums examined health care, land use, public education,
the federal deficit and other pressing problems, with citizens--rather
than experts--in the lead role.

Editors and reporters like those at the Dayton Daily News, who,
faced with
the imminent shut down of a major defense plant and the loss of thousands
of jobs, hired an architect to complete a rendering of what the plant
might look like if converted to civilian use, while simultaneously
reporting on what it would take--from government, business, labor and the
community itself--if the jobs were to be saved.

Editorial pages like those at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane,
Washington, which were re-designed to become more open public forums. In
Spokane, the editors ventured out into the community and found people who
had something to say, but lacked the skills or courage to say it. The
editors acted like writing coaches, helping ordinary citizens gain a voice
in the community, rather than relying on the "usual suspects" who dominate
public debate.

A problem-solving focus like the one taken by the Charlotte Observer
in its "Taking Back our Neighborhoods" series, which examined the
crime rate in the hardest-hit sections of town. The paper asked residents
there to deliberate about the causes and consequences of crime, then
profiled these neighborhoods in depth-- without whitewashing the realities
of street crime on the one hand, or exploiting it for lurid headlines on
the other. The paper then highlighted what local residents had to do for
themselves, what city government could contribute and what the community
as a whole could do to help, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood with
news that spoke of problems and possible answers.

This is but a sampling of hundreds of experiments that put into
practice the ideas behind public journalism. One of the results was a
lively and frequently caustic debate within the press about the proper
role of thl campaigns instead of focusing on "horse race" stories, attacks
and controversy for controversy's sake.

The compact invites citizens to reinstate the honored tradition of
community-level political discussions.

Although the coalition was unable to get agreement from the two
leading Senate candidates in 1996, it did succeed in Minnesota's First
Congressional District, where Republican incumbent Gil Gutnecht and
Democratic challenger Mary Rieder agreed to be bound by the compact's
terms and a separate advertising code. These signed agreements were
voluntary and unenforceable by law; as the campaign wore on, both
candidates complained about violations in the advertisements that each
side aired.

But they also felt constrained by the agreement. Rieder noted
that she and her opponent "said in effect we want to run a hard campaign
but don't want to have ourselves made a mockery of." As she met with
other female candidates around the country and was told to prepare for the
attack-style of campaigning, her fears surfaced: "It made me sick to my
stomach... hearing they would try to go after you and your family. I felt
better knowing the compact was in place." She added that her advertising
consultant in Washington thought that his "creativity" had been hampered
by the compact's terms, a sentiment shared by Gutnecht's ad expert, who
said there were things he wanted to try but couldn't. Which was precisely
the point: to place limits on what the consultants could "create" as they
tried to destroy the opposition.

Here, then, was another case of civic leadership in the press.
Tom Hamburger, a political journalist, felt he had something to offer his
state that went beyond a chronicle of depressing events. His idea sparked
the imaginations of other actors who shared the same desire for a better
civic climate. They agreed to cooperate with one another. The whole
episode illuminated the possibilities of action in the face of national
trends that appeared irresistible. It brought to life the ancient wisdom
of the political compact and made it seem relevant to the politics of
today. And it worked to bring two politicians together in an attempt to
avoid the spiral of mutual destruction.
Rieder and Gutnecht still went at each other with vigor and in
some cases an excess of zeal. They accused each other of violating the
code. Their contest did not become a civics class or a polite discussion
among friendly rivals. But it did show there were alternatives to the
ruling ethic: "destroy your opponent and do it early." In Minnesota,
politics didn't have to be what it was elsewhere. So said one reporter,
moved by the spirit of public journalism. And so says the Minnesota
Compact coalition, which is still in place in that state and ready to try
its hand in the 1998 elections.

7. Conclusion: Public Journalism and the Penn Commission

I have not given here a complete (or even balanced) picture of
public journalism. There is plenty more to say in fair criticism of the
idea and the experiment; but I will leave that to others, including other
commissioners.

What I can do is offer a few concluding thoughts on why public
journalism matters to the work of the Penn National Commission. As I
understand it, the commission has addressed itself to certain destructive
patterns in our common life. These include the deterioration of public
talk and a faltering sense of community amid a host of pressing
challenges-- especially the challenge of living together in a diverse and
complex society, where competing notions of the good are inevitable. What
is not inevitable, the Commission seems to believe, is a public climate of
perpetual warfare and rampant incivility, problems that are particularly
apparent in the way we do politics and conduct our national discourse.

In searching for ways to address these problems, the Commission
has asked itself a series of related questions: what forms of leadership
are required to steer our way out of our current discontents? How can the
spirit of community be revived, without getting overly romantic about it?
What are the cultural patterns that engender civic values and shape
behavior in the public square? What would a better national dialogue look
and sound like, if one can be imagined and brought to life? And how can
we act upon the questions we are asking?

In that light, the case of public journalism suggests to the
Commission the following lessons:

1. Look to the professions. As people are constantly
reminding me, journalism is a business. It needs to turn a profit in
order to survive in an increasingly commercialized and competitive
environment. This is an unarguable fact, but it is not the only fact that
is relevant-- for the concerns of the Commission or the lives of
journalists themselves.

Most people who choose journalism as a field do not make that
choice seeking money, power, or fame. I know because I have asked
them--several hundred of them--in my travels about the field. They often
say they went into journalism to "make a difference," or right wrongs, or
look out for the little guy, or, in a favorite phrase, to "comfort the
afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Never has a journalist said to
me: "I chose this field because my passion is... objectivity!" Never have
I heard: "I am by nature a neutral person, so I thought journalism would
be best for me."

What I am trying to point out is that, despite all the constraints
and pressures they face, most journalists feel a strong duty to the public
good. And this is what makes their craft, which is a business, also a
profession. Professions matter because they profess things. They
legitimate themselves around a commitment to the public interest and
democratic values; and if they sometimes define this commitment in
self-serving fashion, we do them (and ourselves) no favor by treating the
professional's claim to public service as merely a sham or shield.

Rather, if the professions are not serving the public as well as
they might, we should look to what they profess, for we will find there
the rhetorical ground on which a renewed commitment to the common good can
be based. Public journalism was a way of taking seriously the
journalist's identity as a professional. It accepted this claim in good
faith. But it did not assume that what people in the press did and said
was adequate to the times, or faithful to the values that drew them into
the field. Instead, it argued with the profession about what journalism
ought to profess. The argument called for a renewal of professional
identity, along the lines Thomas Bender suggests in his call for a more
"civic professionalism" in the academy.

What civic identity means within any given profession--law,
medicine, accounting, education, commerce, public administration, social
work--will vary with each field of endeavor. But it should also move with
the times, since what we need from professionals will change as our
problems alter and grow. One thing the Commission might do, then, is try
to discern the shape and sound of a more "civic" identity in all
institutions where people feel some sort of professional duty.

Public journalism is an example of that. It does not appeal to
everyone in the press, or even a majority. And it does not offer a
ready-made template for other fields. But it is a useful reminder that
professionalism is not dead or deaf to democracy's call. If we take the
professions more seriously than some professionals do, we might awaken
their slumbering potential for public good.

2. Enlarge the language of democracy. What does it mean
to
be a democrat-- and a journalist? This is another way of saying what
public journalism was about. Democracy, as John Dewey relentlessly
declared, is a way of life, not just a system of government. When Dewey
declared that the only cure for the problems of democracy was more
democracy he did not mean we should vote on everything. He meant that
discovering what democracy demands is a never-ending inquiry.

In particular, it requires fresh and varied attempts to speak and
think like a democrat, while going about all the other business of life.
Public journalism offered another way to talk about democracy as the
ultimate end the press should serve. Not the only other way, or the one
"right" way, but just a different way-- one that we hoped was more attuned
to the times.

And so another thing the Commission might do is ask itself what
other "democratic dialects" need now to be spoken-- in what haunts and by
whom? And then it might set itself the task of trying to talk in such
dialects, or at least hear from others who think they know how to speak
them. Public journalism tried to do that, with limited success. The
Commission might improve on and extend its example to other spheres of
politics and culture. What does it mean to be a democrat-- and a movie
producer? And a doctor? And a pollster? Questions like this may have
heuristic value, if nothing else. And there's always the chance they will
turn practical on us in surprising or fruitful ways.

3. Call for an experimental spirit. Public journalism
said
to professionals in the press: try stuff and learn from what you've tried.
It had to proceed this way because, in truth, no one knew exactly how to
fortify civic identity in the craft or renew its commitment to public
values. When you don't know how to move forward, there are two choices:
you can pretend you know, or you can experiment. What Dewey called the
"quest for certainty" is everywhere the enemy of the kind of patient
inquiry and piecemeal reform he thought appropriate in a democratic
society-- which to him meant a community of learners.

And so another thing the Commission might profitably do is imagine
what an "experimental" spirit would look like in various corners of
society where our key concerns resonate. Without prescribing the "stuff"
to be tried, we can still say "try stuff" in a more than a cursory manner.
We can do this by imagining what the atmosphere would be like in any
public sphere where a spirit of experiment is needed. We can find out who
is experimenting in a genuinely "civic" way-- and who is not, but could
be.

"Try stuff" may not seem like a bold recommendation. But it is
sometimes the best advice to give when we spot predictable patterns in
place, sense a calcified institution in our midst, or see through the
inhibiting quest for certainty.

4. Make resistance revelatory. Public journalism
brought
down on its head a good deal of criticism. Some of it, no doubt, was due
to the fuzzy or even wrong-headed direction in which the experiment
sometimes moved. But much of it revealed in its intensity and dismissive
tone a reflexive quality that had overtaken the mind of the American
press.

The elite press, in particular, was overly quick on the draw, as
it attempted to wave away public journalism as a gimmick or fraud-- or
worse. In the process, however, even the most shallow critiques revealed
where the critic stood on some key questions: What does civic purpose
mean in journalism? What should the power of the press be used for?
What's the best way for this profession to serve democracy? What is the
political role of a journalist?

Any answer that was given to these questions actually contributed
to the experiment. Why? Because speakers had to move into public and
declare themselves on something larger than the latest scandal or missed
story. Resistance to public journalism thus revealed how far the movement
had to go to engage the mind of the press. But it also displayed the
contents of that mind, which made the challenge of finding a civic
identity for journalism easier-- easier to locate.

For the Commission, this might mean calling for things that are
likely to be resisted in ways that say something about what we're up
against. Let me be clear: I am not urging that we be "controversial" for
controversy's sake or to make headlines. But I am saying we can be
strategic in finding the fault lines in our public culture: where
resistance to reform and rethinking might reveal why it hasn't happened
yet.

I believe this was the case with public journalism, which is
simply another way of saying: we should be grateful to have opponents. In
declaring what they're against, they help you understand what you're for.